Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Archangel's Shadows (Guildhunter Series #7) by Nalini Singh

Ashwini was badly injured in the recent war that hit New
York, and her new assignment seems something of a soft-ball compared to her
usual fare. Thankfully, Janvier, the intriguing, sexy and very playful vampire
who has often being her foil is there to make things more interesting and tempt
her to move closer to him – despite the cruel future that she knows makes it
impossible.

Of course, the wake of the war has made even a soft-ball investigation
fraught – with the possibility of covert agents, the need for discretion to
avert panic and the constant tension that threaten the city. Tension that
Elena, trying to navigate the tides of Archangel politics, is all too aware of.

In some ways this book was very distracted – but that
worked. After all, while this is a book that focuses on Ashwini and Janvier,
there is still a lot going on in the world – the aftermath of the war, Elena
and Raphael juggling the city and the other Archangels, ongoing covert warfare.
I really like that these things haven’t just stopped because we’re focused on
another story. This world is rich and involved and there’s a whole lot going on
– and we simply cannot ignore the epic happening completely even if Ashwini and
Janvier, unlike the other protagonists, are not on a high enough level to be
directly involved. I love the fact that it manages to tell the story of the
world, how this manages to continue to be Elena and Raphael’s stories – the core
characters – even while the protagonist shifts. This is a wonderful switch from
other long running series with shifting protagonists as it sometimes feels like
every book completely ignores what has passed before. This isn’t just a story
of Ashwini and Janvier – this is the story of New York, of the Archangel
Raphael and and his consort Elena and a world wide brewing event.

I like the juxtaposition of both the epic, worldwide war
and the more local issue – because just as the world-wide brewing war can’t be
ignored for the sake of Ashwini and Janvier’s story, nor can local issues of
ruling Raphael’s territory be ignored because of political machinations.
Murders need investigating, people need to be saved, vampires have to be kept
in line. On top of that there’s the inherent link between the meta story and
this book’s plot – and not just covert agents trying to destabilise the
territory – but even things like the war dividing the vampires who fought and
those who continue to indulge themselves, or the fear of panic among the uneasy
population and even the vampire’s growing aggression having recently been in
combat.

Then there’s Elena’s continued growth as Consort – not just
her personal skills but the way she’s learning the necessary etiquette and
hosting, finding her own level with the other Archangels as well as Raphael’s
household and even changing the way things are done in the territory with her
new insights.

There’s also some really cute moments like all the
vampires now buying blood from the business Elena’s invested in because they
want her first venture to succeed and Janvier’s kind of cutely embarrassed
about it. There’s some other nice world building developments – like the idea
that we only see the worst of vampires because those less given to destructive
proclivities simply don’t come to the attention of the Hunters and some more
development of other Archangels (especially Titus). Lots of little bits that
just complete this world in richer colour.

Put all this together and it should be impossible to
balance – but it isn’t, it works and it all works as a whole rather than lots
of disparate elements thrown together. The pacing is excellent, the way the
elements come together is excellent and it’s just an altogether excellent
continuation of the whole story – not just Ashwini and Janvier

Their story is well done, their mutual investigations
benefit from both of them being there and there’s plenty of fun, action and
competence from both. They’re both excellent at their job, both know it and
both work really well together and their banter can be great at times. As the
romance heated up I think there was a problem with them losing that edge of fun
– Ashwini’s issues (which I’ll get to and wasn’t a fan off) completely deflated
what made their interactions so great – their genuine sense of fun and
amusement. Not just passion, but actual fun, actual enjoyment and it was a real
shame that these random, eccentric and fun loving personalities couldn’t build
a relationship on that without great big buckets of angst being dumped on
everything.

They’re strong characters with powerful elements I like –
but I feel like some strong romance clichés have squished out the very elements
that made them so original. Especially when we also take the original, highly
amusing and alien figure of Naasir (with his excellent feline mannerisms) and
add him to the mix. These three are amazingly fun together – and it’s sad to
suppress all that by dropping buckets of angst on them because romance =
tragedy.

Ashwini has a tragic past that is ongoing and I’m kind of
in mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it’s really well done, it’s very
personal to herself and her family and her current powers. It’s also more
nuanced than the standard “I was kidnapped by bad people who did bad things to
me and now I am sad” story. It’s well done on that score and it isn’t entirely
cured just because she’s met Janvier and true love now strikes (not entirely).
So, in itself, it’s not bad. But – yes there’s a but – this is the 7th
book in the Guildhunter series and the same pattern is repeating. I’m beginning
to have severe doubts about the Guild’s recruitment strategy. Is the first
question on the application form “do you have a deep seated emotional trauma
that continues to haunt you? Yes? Welcome aboard! No? Right, we’ll try to get
you one of them as soon as possible.” It’s getting repetitive and I’m not
entirely sure how much it added to Ashwini – either her special psychic ability
(or even if her special psychic ability actually was that essential to the
plot) or her characterisation or her relationship with Janvier. It was part of
all, but I don’t think it was an essential part. I just hope when the next book
comes we will have a character who isn’t carrying around a truck load of mandatory
pain to work through.

As ever with this series, the racial inclusion is
excellent. Ashwini and her family are of South Asian descent. We have Naasir
playing a major role. Elena continues to be very much present and influential. Dmitri
is always a force in the books and many of the other POC we’ve seen in the
series make brief appearances. On top of that, this series continues to have
the constant racial inclusion – it doesn’t rely on a few characters or a few
major characters; inclusion happens among every group in every place, racial
diversity is the norm and omnipresent, not confined to the designated tokens or
a few characters.

I also liked the depiction of sex workers – presenting them
as vulnerable without fetishising it or dumping epic amounts of pity on them
and also doing a great job of humanising them and making the death much more
poignant since it depicted a person, not just a random victim

Ashwini is also dyslexic and the disability has
definitely coloured her experiences and made for an interesting new development
and depiction of the character. Less ideal is the looming threat of mental
illness playing the role
as a fate-worse-then-death

On LGBT inclusion we have some of the ongoing problems –
same-sex sex being either something mentioned but not shown or part of the many
things ancient vampires/angels do because they’re bored/depraved/cruel/perverse
– it’s really hammered home over and over again that when the immortal
vampires/angels get very very old many of them get jaded and they do things to
break that boredom – usually cruel, sadistic sexual things and this is when
same-sex sexuality is depicted.

Which also really hurts the one time this series has
tried to produce a non-offensive or Maris’d bisexual
character –Keir. He’s an angel who is a healer, a caregiver – and support staff
(which is a trope) but generally a not bad, albeit minor character. But when
Elena asks him about his apparent attraction to men after having previously
heard of his female lovers, Keir references his great age and love having many
faces. He could have said “I’m bisexual” which would have been ideal – except he
doesn’t mention his sexuality and instead references his age in a series where
we’re repeatedly shown ancient beings getting bored and “experimenting” for
their – usually perverse – amusement. The depiction is minor but only a little
shaky – but the context is dubious to say the least.

I hope this book is a sign of how this series will
continue – the hugeness of it, the constantly present meta, the multiple
characters all coming together as a whole (and slowly expanding Elena’s guard)
makes me really excited about the next book. I don’t think I’ve seen many
series that do such a good job of telling personal stories but always keeping
the world, the meta and the past characters all very present and meaningful;
more like this, lots more!